


Honeycrisp

by iniquiticity



Category: Original Work, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6105865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels whole. He tastes apples.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honeycrisp

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this started out as lafayandré fic, but it's distant enough from that that I wasn't sure if it now counts as original work. I went with both. 
> 
> Written for [Pic for 1000 Challenge 14: Money](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/244122.html?view=1113242#t1113242). Click [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/96359864@N07/19166277409) to see my prompt image. 
> 
> The underlying concept of this story was a team effort by myself and the majestic [stella](https://twitter.com/qcoIdwater), who wonderfully granted me her permission to base this work on it.

*

This is how it goes. 

He is born; he has memories of a thousand lifetimes and one face; he sees the face, his other face, his other half, his missing piece, his soul; the man dies; he lives. 

Perhaps in his hundred lifetimes, he has accumulated a hundred days whole. The other days are a pointless blur of existence, of questions and doubt. These particular days are worse, with their pale green sky, suspicious growls from the mist on the horizon, and dark, mysterious clouds. He wonders if this is worse than smallpox or starving on the Russian plain.

Gil, as he has taken to calling himself this time around, hangs his mask and his shotgun over his shoulder as he steps inside the room. He closes the door and settles his travelling pack next to him. Studies the place. _Cash only,_ a sign says, behind the bar, and he manages a thin smile. He aches for a cigarette even though it’s been a lifetime since had one.

He reaches into his bag and studies items he has to barter. Some scavenged metal bits. Bullets. Some miscellaneous seeds. A tiny mirror. Bandages. Several carefully wrapped pieces of glass.

There are wooden barrels behind the bar. Maybe real wood, though he can’t imagine where from. A nice place to be at the end of the world. It has to be the end of the world, because no one lives very long, and he hasn’t found the man. Maybe the world is ending because he hasn’t found the man. 

At least they still have liquor from hops and barley and grain grown in secret, where it can’t be destroyed or ransacked or infected with a thousand plagues. 

_Cider_ , one reads. Apples? He hasn’t seen a tree in two lifetimes. But real wood barrels….

Ominous noises come from outside the bar. Gil touches his shotgun. He looks to the door. When he looks back, there is a man behind the bar.

 _Him._

He’s seen this man on the banks of the Nile. He has seen him in the armor of the British Empire. He has seen him drunk at a bacchanalia. He has seen him dressed in light cloth, suffering the heat of the Renaissance Italy summer. 

He has seen the man die. 

He remembers two days in between the man’s capture and hanging as a British spy in the American Revolution. Gil had been a French aristocrat, then. He had been a king where the man had been a slave. He had been a Spartan when the man had been from Athens. He had been a Mongol, and this man a servant of the Ottoman Empire. He had been French, and the man had been German, and they had played soccer between the trenches in 1914, and then he had seen the man’s corpse in no man’s land. He has seen the man with sarcomas, laughing in 1985, and he had been a doctor, helpless and confused. 

This is them, or maybe they are both him; he’s never quite sure. 

This is how it goes. 

He is born; he has memories of a thousand lifetimes and one face; he sees the face, his other face, his other half, his missing piece, his soul; the man dies; he lives. 

Perhaps in his hundred lifetimes, he has accumulated a hundred days whole. 

“What’ll it be?” His soulmate asks. His soulmate has the only eyes he sees clearly. His soulmate knows him just as well. “I’m John.” 

“Gil.” 

They shake hands. John smiles at him. It is a smile that has crossed millenia. The noises come closer. John will die. He will live.

“Real apples?” Gil asks, indicating one of the barrels. John nods, and pours him some cider. 

The flavor is explosive. Familiar from a past life, warm and comforting. An escape from his misery. Different from days of tepid water and stale beer. Even though he knows he should savor it, he gulps the cider down. It goes to his head. He hasn’t eaten yet today. 

He looks at John. John is as beautiful as he was in Egypt, Sumeria, Rome, and Japan.

There is a crash against the door. Gil puts his hand against the shotgun without looking away from John.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” John says. He pours another glass for Gil without asking for payment, and stares at him, eyes too warm for a man condemned a thousand times. Gil condemns John with his presence. He has tried to avoid him, only they are drawn together. He suffers the slow misery of living half-empty, and John suffers the quick misery of knowing his end. “Do you think we’ll come back, after this? Maybe it’s the end of ends.” He walks around the end of the bar and sits next to Gil. He rests a wicked machete next to Gil’s shotgun.

Gil pulls him close and kisses him. He feels whole. He tastes apples. He tastes their time American West, before John was struck by a throwing knife. He tastes their expedition in the Amazon, before John was poisoned. 

John kisses him back. John’s arms come up to hold him, despite his dirt and grime. John is here and this is the moment he has waited his life for, that he will remember. This moment will go with them laughing in Ireland. It will go with them fucking until they are exhausted in South Africa. It will go with him feeding John dinner in Peru. 

He is born; he has memories of a thousand lifetimes and one face; he sees the face, his other face, his other half, his missing piece, his soul; the man dies; he lives. 

They grab their weapons without pulling away from the kiss. They are hit with an explosive shower of wooden shrapnel from the door. The glass is knocked over, splattering them both with sweet, sharp cider. They smile at each other, and turn towards the invading force.

This is how it goes.


End file.
